It was a good week overall for Steve Cohen, the Democratic
nominee in the 9th District congressional race.
There was no doubting the significance of last Wednesday’s
downtown ceremony in which, from a stand in front of the federal building,
mayors Willie Herenton and A C Wharton conferred their
enthusiastic imprimaturs on Cohen’s candidacy – as did such lions of the Civil
Rights era as longtime NAACP head Maxine Smith and just retired General
Sessions judge Russell Sugarmon.
And a supporting cast of other public officials, black and
white, were on hand to swell the chorus and create an impression of unstoppable
momentum.
But it ain’t over yet.
While the odds still favor Cohen, his two opponents –
Republican Mark White and independent Jake Ford, a self-described
Democrat who skipped the crowded party primary – not only aren’t giving up,
they’re just beginning to fight.
Though it is likely that the jets would have been turned on
for young Ford at some point anyhow, that outcome may have been assured by
post-podium remarks made last week by Memphis mayor Herenton, who, just after he
and Shelby County mayor Wharton had publicly endorsed
Cohen, went on to make a point of blasting the larger Ford family, whom Herenton
said he “resented” for seeking a political “monopoly.”
Within minutes after those remarks went out over local TV,
former congressman Harold Ford Sr., Jake Ford’s father, was on the phone
building bridges with the Rev. La Simba Gray.
For several months, ever since the multi-candidate
Democratic primary race began in earnest in January, Gray and a few other black
African-American ministers have been trying to organize a consensus campaign
around a single black candidate for the seat.
With Cohen having eliminated some dozen African-American
contenders by outpacing them in the Democratic primary, the only remaining
prospect is Jake Ford, who maintains that he would caucus with the congressional
Democrats if elected.
Though Jake Ford is an unknown quantity to much of the
public, a brief appearance on local television last week, on the night of the
two mayors’ event for Cohen, showcased him as a slim, well-groomed and
reasonably well-spoken – if less prepossessing – version of his older brother,
U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr.
Jake Ford’s posture on the occasion, unprovocative and
respectful toward the two mayors (whom he declared himself a “supporter” of) did
much to mitigate a profile – high-school dropout and hothead – that had been
widely propagated in quarters as diverse as local establishment circles and the
highly un-establishment blog of African-American maverick Thaddeus Matthews
(whose name for the candidate is “Joke Ford”).
Rep. Ford himself, focusing on a U.S. Senate in which he
seemed to be running even with Republican nominee Bob Corker, has
famously maintained a neutral posture in relation to his brother and Cohen, both
of whom he has said he considers Democrats.
And, though third-place primary finisher Joe Ford Jr.,
a first cousin of Harold Ford Jr. and Jake Ford, has endorsed Cohen, his father,
current Shelby County Commission chairman Joe Ford Sr., is supporting
nephew Jake
Moreover, Harold Ford Sr., once the political broker par
excellence in local Democratic circles and now a Florida-based consultant, seems
not only to have felt challenged by the critical statements from longtime rival
Herenton but determined to re-assert his muscle in Shelby County affairs.
Amid reports that he had personally channeled significant
sums of money into son Jake’s congressional effort, the former longtime
congressman was on the scene and on the phone this week, working all his
erstwhile networks hard.
For his part, GOP candidate Mark White was conceding
nothing. In a lengthy address Monday night to a “Patriot’s Day” banquet
sponsored by the Coalition of Conservative Republican Clubs (formerly Defenders
of Freedom), White cited the fact of the bedrock 30 percent share of 9th
District votes traditionally claimed by Republican candidates and focused on
religious and moral values which he believes are shared by church-going black
Democrats.
Jake Ford
*Meanwhile, it is an inescapable fact that all the
ongoing Ford-family races (including Ophelia Ford‘s in state
Senate District 29) will have an impact each other.
Jake Ford will profit to some degree from what is expected
to be a massive Get-Out-the-Vote effort in Shelby County for the Senate
candidacy of his brother Harold – though most active Democrats supporting Rep.
Ford are lined up also with state Senator Cohen’s congressional bid.
Conspicuously absent from last week’s meeting of the local
Democratic executive committee was member Bill Larsha, who had launched
an effort to support Jake Ford’s candidacy, nor was any notice of Larsha’s
initiative taken by committee members, who were addressed briefly by Cohen.
And there’s the parallel question: How will the potentially
divisive effect of Jake Ford’s race against Cohen affect Democratic solidarity –
not only here but elsewhere in the state? In a weekend editorial, the Nashville
Tennessean, a longtime bellwether for Middle Tennessee Democrats,
editorialized against what it saw as a racially motivated stop-Cohen movement.
*After a typically boisterous meeting of the Shelby County
Democratic executive committee last week, rules were put in place for a
37-member selection committee to complete its judgment this week for a successor
to District 33 state Senator Kathryn Bowers, a
Tennessee Waltz indictee who announced her resignation from the Senate two weeks
ago.
The decision was scheduled to be made this Thursday night
at Cummings Street Baptist Church on East Raines
Road, and, as of press time, the major candidates were:
Realtor Steve Webster,
who ran a respectable second in the August primary to Bowers;Lea Ester Redmond,
an activist, executive committee member, and former campaign hand in
presidential candidate John Kerry‘s local 2004 effort;Reginald Tate,
an architect and reputedly a favorite of Sidney Chism, a newly sworn-in
Shelby County commissioner who heads one of the party’s major factions.Ed Stanton Sr.,
father of recent congressional candidate Ed Stanton Jr. and a well-liked veteran
of Shelby County government in his own right;Del Gill,
who is either irrepressible or obstreperous depending on one’s vantage point and
at the very least is (and has) a constituency of one.(UPDATE: Additional applicants are Coleman Thompson, Walter Paytne, and John Brown.)
For a while last week it
appeared that former city councilman Jerome Rubin, now an officer of the
Center City Commission, might make a run for it, but Rubin was apparently a
dropout as of this week.
Much time was spent preparing
ground rules at last week’s full committee meeting at the IBEW union hall. Some
elaborate procedures were suggested: One proposal was for applicants to list
contact people at their former places of employment; another was to lay out all
the particulars of one’s personal rap sheet. (In the course of debate on the
latter, a drunk who had wandered into the building got off a good two-liner
before being ejected: “Well, don’t let Bush back in. And don’t let Herenton back
in,” he said.
In the end the requirements were
fairly bare-bones. Though a formal application process was called for (ending as
of Tuesday) and residency and other requirements were mandated, the root fact
was that whoever gets the most votes wins, and the 37 selectors are made up of
all committee members whose districts overlap with District 33.
Jake Ford
*Newly installed Shelby
County Commissioner Henri Brooks confirmed on Monday that she had no
intention of attempting to serve also as state representative from District 92
(a double duty which the county charter would seem to prohibit in any case).
With a Monday deadline
approaching, however, neither local Democratic chairman Matt Kuhn nor
state election coordinator Brook Thompson (who was in Shelby County for
last week’s Democratic committee meeting) had yet received a withdrawal
announcement from Brooks that would allow the local party to substitute a
nominee for her on the November ballot.
If Monday comes and goes without
such a formal announcement from Brooks, and she withdraws subsequently, it will
be necessary for her new commission mates to appoint an interim successor.
(Brooks said Monday she had somebody in mind to recommend.) And a special
election will have to be called – at an estimated cost to the taxpayers of some
$200,000.
Jake Ford
*One interpretation of
former Senator Bowers’ surprise decision last week to stand trial — or at least
not to plead guilty at the time – was that she intended to wait and see what
kind of fate awaited her District 33 predecessor, Roscoe Dixon.
Convicted earlier in the summer
on five counts of bribery and extortion, Dixon was scheduled for sentencing last
Friday. Whence came Surprise #2 of the legal week: Though Dixon, betraying a
tenseness that had not been so evident during his trial, seemed ready for
judgment, his attorney, Coleman Garrett, turned out not to be.
And Garrett’s reason – the
drastic illness of his brother, newly hospitalized in Jackson, Mississippi – was
convincing enough for presiding federal judge Jon McCalla to grant, in
effect, a one-month reprieve. Dixon’s new sentencing date is October 13. Yes,
that’s a Friday the 13th.
